Reduced well‐being during the COVID‐19 pandemic – The role of working conditions
利用德国面板数据，研究疫情初期工作条件变化对男女幸福感的不同影响，发现女性幸福感下降更大，但并非由工作条件差异导致，而是与照护角色、社会担忧和孤独感有关。
Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic has had diverse impacts on the employment conditions and family responsibilities of men and women. Thus, women and men were exposed to very different roles and associated challenges, which may have affected their well‐being very differently. Using data from the National Educational Panel Study and its supplementary COVID‐19 web survey for Germany (May–June 2020), we investigate gender differences in the relationship between working conditions and within‐changes in subjective well‐being. We systematically consider the household context by distinguishing between adults with and without younger children in the household. The results from multivariate change‐score regressions reveal a decline in all respondents' life satisfaction, particularly among women with and without younger children. However, the greater reduction in women's well‐being cannot be linked to systematic differences in working conditions throughout the pandemic. Kitagawa–Oaxaca–Blinder counterfactual decompositions confirm this conclusion. Further analyses suggest that women's caregiving role, societal concerns, and greater loneliness partly explain the remaining gender differences in altered satisfaction. From a general perspective, our results suggest important gender differences in social life and psychological distress at the beginning of the pandemic, which are likely to become more pronounced as the crisis has unfolded.